The people, who were all friendly,Meeting the Boss, who was friendly and down to earth,Meeting Alessio who had time to listen to your thoughts, whoever you were,Playing Project Pandora!!!! Just epic,Playing 6 games of Kings of War, a fast and brutal game,The staff at Maelstrom Games,The venue,Playing the 3 up version of Dwarf kings hold,Seeing some well painted armysThe Lass behind the bar who did an epic job of serving 30 odd very thirsty Wargammers.Tim and Chris, Great organisers. Getting to go 1st at least onceČ!!!!Our names will be in the New rule book!!!!!!The Evil Spaniard award,All 6 of my opponents.

What was not

Mantic staff coming in the top 3 (2 with total cheese lists, not the Ork one), new challenge, to topple these guys!The drive back home (through centre of Birmingham)Craig sleeping in his car due to a friend letting him down!Cannon actually hitting, not fun being on the receiving end of that!A banner Bearer who just wouldnt DIE!!!!!!! even with 14 wounds!!!!!

Ok so it was in the brief to try and break the game, but surely if you work at Mantic you just point these things out to Alessio before hand....... Doh..

A little bit of feedback. When we used to run our tournaments we only played ourselves to fill in numbers and when we did, we made sure our scores didn't count in the final standings. That way there could be no claims of bias and people didn't feel cheated out of any places (not that any fixing was involved obviously but it removed any doubt).

The other thing was a word of caution for the future. Obviously one of the purposes this time was to highlight issues with list building and the rules. However, I'd ask you seriously consider letting Mantic staff build unplayable lists in the future for "normal" tournaments. If Mantic are there representing the company, trashing all-comers with ridiculous lists isn't a good advertisement for the game and isn't fun for anyone.

With the relatively limited* (for a tabletop wargame) stats in KoW there shouldn't be much in the way of "ridiculous lists", if there are then there's an issue with points or army composition structure.

*Not a criticism

I've become inclined to think that in addition to the Solid/HM/WM categorisation there should be an "auxilia" categorisation (so 1 auxilia per solid) to help reduce shenannigans.

KoW is an evolving game. The "big book" will be issued this year with the final set of rules in it. The 1st and 2nd invitationals were designed to play test the current rule set and, to some degree, try and break them.

It's now down to a couple of units that are incorrectly pointed and some small tweaks to the core rules; I've got confidence that when the final rules are issued, all the armies will have their strengths and weaknesses, which makes for interesting tournaments.

Thanks to all 6 of my opponents for awesome games, even Alberto and his cannons of doom.

My criticism of the rules is in a few places at the minute after my first 6 games of kings of war;

1. Regeneration. It's too strong at the minute. If it was something like elite/vicious where for Regeneration (x) you had to reroll that many successful wounds per turn, it would be OK imo.

2. Individual. I kept putting my battle standard bearers in front of units to delay them. But if you do the proposed change of just running through them then certain characters become useless. How about a subcategory of 'Support' and 'Combat' characters. So if your Battle Standard Bearer or Wizard get in the way of a charge they die, if your dwarf lord does, then you fight the dwarf lord as he's nails. It forces support characters to be just that.

3. Cannons. Heh. I feel there needs to be an adverse affect to firing them. If it was 2D6 - 4, then on a 0, -1 or -2, they blow up or something.

4. Army selection. It's too free. There needs to be more structure, to stop min maxing.

5. Capturing objectives. I'll throw my hat in the ring again and say a hierarchal system for capturing would be nice, hordes > regiments > troops > other units > monsters > characters > war machines.

Despite this, I had an awesome weekend, learnt loads, met loads of new people, loved the rules, didn't lose somehow. Gutted to draw vs Tim but dems the dice. It was *slightly* annoying that 2 mantic staff members brought 'horror' armies that they knew in advance and didn't fancy sharing with their parent company. I also think that during the weekend they should have been subject to more playtesting. All the reccomendations about cannon damage, try them out with Alberto. All the reccomendations on gargoyles, try them out on Josh. Ah well.

If I remember correctly, the regenerating dwarf lord was one of the main complaints. Didn't play against it, but it wouldnt have bothered me that much.. 185 pts in a single model with only 5 attacks is not a real problem, just need to ignore it!, or throw expendable units at it.

It was annoying that they half sorted the cannon issue after game 1 ( limiting re-rolls to one per war smith/ engineer) but they didn't deal with the cause of the problem (45 point core units in the human army). The only people who were penalised by the cannon change were the dwarf players... And there were no changes to Gargoyles at all during the weekend.

The introduction of an "irregular" rule or something meaning a unit with it can never count as a solid unit (and therefore is not eligible for unlocking warmachines etc.

An overrun rule for solid units on killing characters to stop them acting as blockers

Cannons in themselves are fine. It's the number of rerolls and cannons some armies can get access to which is the problem. This will be addressed.

Gargoyles will be changed! Greatax and the Steel Behemoth will get a boost.

Magic items - will probably get 2 values, one for hordes and one for other units. Some kind of scaling anyway.

I talked to Alessio about Regeneration and the possible fix. He'll think about it.

On taking objectives I think it should be kept simple. Monsters and Solid units trump others. Leave it that simple. I don't know if anything will happen on that though.

He took note of loads of other things too. I'm sure I'll remember them at some point

BTW... I discovered to my cost near the end of the last game that if a unit is ON an objective it CANNOT be disputed. It's not enough to just be within 3" of it. If I'd realised that I would have played objective games very differently and maybe even changed my army choices.

BTW... I discovered to my cost near the end of the last game that if a unit is ON an objective it CANNOT be disputed. It's not enough to just be within 3" of it. If I'd realised that I would have played objective games very differently and maybe even changed my army choices.

WHAT!!!!!!!!!! Oh hell that would have made a bloody massive difference to two of the games I played!!!!!!!!!